


In the Eye of the Storm

by Lily_Dragon



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Angst, Dimension Cannon, Dimension-Hopping Rose, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 15:41:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6382486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lily_Dragon/pseuds/Lily_Dragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Rose knew she wasn’t in the right place the minute her feet touched the ground. The little snow-covered village was definitely not early 20th century London.In another life she would have marveled at the dreamy atmosphere of the place, chasing the cold away with laughter, taking his hand and suggesting a warm drink before moving on to the next adventure. But this wasn’t her life anymore. Now, she could only try to bare the cold in her limbs with the help of her overly thin jacket, and the ice in her heart with the little hope she had left." While dimension-hopping, Rose finds way more than she had bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Eye of the Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SilentStars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentStars/gifts).



> So... This is an odd one. It's an answer to Timepetals prompts weekly ficlet challenge that ended up being quite different than the original plot. What started out as an unassuming cute idea began to turn dark and big, so the only solution for a weekly challenge was to try and limit the size of it. So this is an experimental attempt to join a story together in 10 drabbles. It is inspired by the song "I of the Storm", from "Of Monsters and Men", whose lyrics are the titles of each drabble. I hope this makes at least a bit of sense!

**I - If I could face them...**

Rose knew she wasn’t in the right place the minute her feet touched the ground. The little snow-covered village was definitely not early 20th century London.In another life she would have marvelled at the dreamy atmosphere of the place, chasing the cold away with laughter, taking his hand and suggesting a warm drink before moving on to the next adventure. But this wasn't her life anymore. Now, she could only try to bare the cold in her limbs with the help of her overly thin jacket, and the ice in her heart with the little hope she had left.

  


**II - If I could make amends with all my shadows, I'd bow my head and welcome them.**

She was about to jump back home when she spotted him. He wore a black coat and a red scarf, but his hair and gait were unmistakable. Years of disappointments stopped her from running straight to him, so she followed him to a cottage in the edge of town. Rose was about to make her presence known when the door opened and she saw herself standing at the threshold, smiling at him. Her heart constricted as she saw him kiss her double deeply, and shattered when he scooped up the bundle in her arms.

The Doctor. A husband, _a father_.

  


**III - But I feel it burning, like when the winter wind stops my breathing.**

It wasn’t her Doctor after all.

She was in a reality where her Doctor was human, bound to the slow path but free to love his wife and daughter and express it freely through actions and words.   
She crouched in the snow for hours, watching through the windows.She watched as they ate dinner, played with their baby and sung her to sleep. Rose couldn’t look away as they made love, guessing their whispered words and missing terribly something she never had. She was so enthralled by their warmth that she didn’t notice the cold creeping up on her bones…

  


**IV - Are you really gonna love me when I'm gone? I fear you won't. I fear you won't.**

She woke up to the image of herself with an angry scowl, pointing a strange stick at her.

“It’s been too long for polyjuice potion, so why the hell do you look like me?”

It took Rose a few seconds to remember where she had heard those strange words.

“You’re a witch…,” Rose wondered.

“Aren’t you?”

Despite her suspicion, the other woman had saved her life when she found her by her window in the morning, and Rose felt too tired to lie.

In a world of wands and wonders, how hard would it be to believe in parallel universes?

  


**V - And it echoes when I breathe until all you see is my ghost**   


Two hours later and two Roses are laughing over tea and biscuits.

In this universe, Rose is a muggleborn who fell in love with a traveller called Jonathan Noble, going on adventures all over the world until little Donna turned their lives around. Rose jolted the first time she heard the baby’s name.   
Could it really be? Was she…

Rose had stayed home ever since Donna’s birth, isolated from others because the redhead had telepathic abilities that were beyond what wizards considered normal, and they didn’t want their baby to be mistreated until she was old enough to control it.

  


**VI - Empty vessel, crooked teeth. Wish you could see.**   


When Rose told her about her dimension-hopping, the witch’s eyes went wide with longing.

“Travelling across dimensions… It feels like it’s been forever since I left this house” she sighs, and Rose wants to slap her.

“I’m not doing it for fun!” Rose all but shouts. “It’s dangerous and desperate!” Her double is

It seems they both shared that insufferable curiosity.

“I would never dare to leave Donna alone, but with you here… And you seem so tired, maybe you could rest here…”

Before Rose could think or do anything, the other woman touched the device and was gone. 

**  
**

******VII - And they call me under. And I'm shaking like a leaf. And they call me under. And I wither underneath, in this storm.**

Rose panicked for two seconds until Donna’s cries reached her ears.

_How could she just… wander off like that?_

She had been so caught up in her desperate, lonely life, that seeing a spark of her old curiosity and recklessness made her bitter.

With the little one to distract her, Rose spent her day in a surreal quietness, cooking, reading and keeping the fire warm and crackling. She was just starting to relax when it hit her: what will happen when the Doctor - when John Noble - comes home that night? How could she tell him that his wife was gone?

  


**VIII -  I am a stranger. I am an alien inside a structure. Are you really gonna love me when I'm gone?**   


There is fire in John’s eyes, and Rose tried to convince herself that she needed to stop. Her mind went blank as she felt the achingly familiar arms around her.She didn’t know whether she was shattering or mending when he whispered his love as he moved inside her. She knows it’s not her Doctor, he’s human, but his voice is exactly the same and his hair feels like silk between her fingers.If she closes her eyes she can pretend to be another Rose, warm and safe and loved in so many ways… 

  
She cries herself to sleep that night.

  


**IX - And all my faults. I feel it biting, I feel it break my skin so uninviting.**   


She couldn’t look the other Rose in the eye when she came back on the next day. She said a short goodbye, holding back tears as she pressed the button, leaving her temporary refuge behind.

She refused to be ashamed of those memories, keeping them close whenever the horrors she witnessed were too much to bear.   
Besides, she was fighting for them, too. Finding the Doctor would mean saving the fabric of reality, holding together this beautiful world where Rose and her Doctor could be a family, and Donna Noble would be only the most important girl in their universe.

  


**X - Are you really gonna need me when I'm gone? I fear you won't. I fear you won't.**   


“Why didn’t you tell me, love?” His voice is soft as they lay in bed.

“I always wondered if you knew,” she answered, holding him tighter.

“How could I not?” He touches her temple, reveling in the warmth of her mind.”I trusted you had a good reason for me to pretend. I’m just surprised you weren’t jealous”

Rose kissed him, projecting her amusement into his mind. In her world of time travel, circular paradoxes and complicated space-time events, how could she begrudge her past self that moment?

“It’s part of the timeline that led me here, after all.”

**  
**

**Author's Note:**

> So, this week, @SilentStars submitted a plot bunny to @Timepetalsprompts, asking for a Parent Trap AU in which a dimension-hopping Rose would find another version of herself, all happy and in love with an alternate version of the Doctor... And bonus points if it was actually Rose and Tentoo. It all started happily enough - I even threw in a cool Harry Potter crossover, how could it go wrong? And yet when I tried to go for fluff and shenanigans, all I got was this strange, wintery and miserable vibe... And then I found the song and everything went downhill from there. Suddenly I had this huge angstfest in my hands, and absolutely no time to write it... So the idea of the 10 drabbles was born. 
> 
> As someone who likes to babble and write too much and in great detail, it was a huge challenge trying to keep it short, to the point, understandable and with some emotion thrown into the mix... Well, let's see if any of it can be understood ^^


End file.
